Author(s):

Marshall School of Business, University of Southern CaliforniaEDHEC Business School

Fernando Zapatero

Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

The only available answers to the above question are set in a static mean-variance framework, with no explicit accounting for uncertainty on the active manager’s ability to generate abnormal return, and usually generate unreasonably high allocations to hedge funds. In this paper, we apply the model introduced in Cvitanic, Lazrak, Martellini and Zapatero (2002b) for optimal investment strategies in the presence of uncertain abnormal returns to a database of hedge funds. We find that the presence of model risk significantly decreases an investor’s optimal allocation to hedge funds. Another finding of this paper is that low beta hedge funds may serve as natural substitutes for a significant portion of an investor's risk-free asset holdings.

About EDHEC

Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the top 15 European business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC is a school for business, rather than a business school, where excellence in teaching and research focuses on innovation to stimulate entrepreneurship and creativity. EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching philosophy, inspired by its award-winning research activities, focuses on “learning by doing”.